Those Who Play Games in the Stars
by LeonaWriter
Summary: In the far, distant future, humankind has swept out across the stars and the magic of the Duel is almost forgotten, absorbed into the science of Virtual Reality.  Then the Shadows come alive again, bringing back memories and bringing back the long dead...


Those Who Play Games in the Stars

Chapter 1

(In which everything is explained, but at the same time, nothing at all.)

...

Marik came to, vision blurring, to see a familiar shape of a person in the doorway. He was lying down on something now, soft, and yet at the same time, tough. Still, it was better than the steel floor he'd fallen onto before. He rubbed at his eyes, screwing them up and opening them wide to get rid of the sensation of looking through a mirage. Slowly, his sight returned to normal.

There, in front of him, stood Yugi - but not, precisely, as Marik remembered. This Yugi was taller, older, his eyes more narrowed and his hair pulled back into a low ponytail, yellow lightning flashing through the unruly black-to-red hair. He was wearing a blue jumpsuit of a sort, with a utility belt of some kind around his waist. A strap of some kind was attached to his left wrist, like an oversized pocketwatch.

In short, this wasn't the Yugi that Marik knew. The Egyptian stared, unable to slot this in with his view of how reality worked. There were two Yugis - there was the regular one, and then there was the Pharaoh. Atem, they'd said. His name was Atem, and this wasn't even him, because he'd moved on.

Not-Yugi raised an eyebrow at him.

"Awake now, are you? Good. I was starting to wonder if you were just going to lie in a coma, or something."

"This is a sick joke," Marik growled out. "I don't know who you are, or who you think you are, but you can quit with the dress up already. I know you're not Yugi."

This got both eyebrows raised, in an expression of... amusement? Surprise? Usually, Yugi was fairly open with his emotions. And he was still having a hard time separating the two in his mind.

"You're right," said the stranger. "I'm not Yugi Mutou. You can call me Sabacc. And this," he said, motioning to the walls around them, "is the Blue-Eyes."

Marik laughed, and in a detached way he noted that it sounded like he was going into hysterics. Possibly because he was.

"Blue-Eyes? As in, 'Blue Eyes White Dragon'? That jet plane isn't this big! Oh, don't tell me Kaiba's behind all this-" he cut himself off, noticing the shifty, guilty look that was all too damn familiar in the not-Yugi's - in Sabacc's - eyes. No. "I guess my complete surrender wasn't good enough for him, then? How long has he been planning this?" He asked, not really caring about the answer and giving a hollow laugh.

"The Blue-Eyes is a Dragon class carrier ship for both people and cargo, not a jet plane, Marik Ishtar. And Seth's been experimenting with Out-Of-Duel VRs for over a decade, now. You simply - if it means anything, none of us meant for this to happen."

Marik's world tilted, hardly taking note of the real and honest discomfort and shame in Sabacc's voice. His world was blurring again, and through the fog he could vaguely see not-Yugi hurriedly tap on the oversized watch on his wrist and hear noises he couldn't completely understand.

"A little help here?"

"What, already?"

"Damn it, you- I'd only just had him stabilised, and now - what's going on?"

"I don't know, Rin-" The world burst into ashen flames, Marik's form losing cohesion rapidly. "Reaper's Revenge - get your backside down here _right now,_ Rintoki!"

A Millennia of maybe two or three minutes had passed before a dark head topped with stark white hair and a scar that ran from the eyebrow down to the cheek of the other man's face and clean over his right eye, appeared in the doorway. The moment he saw what was going on, he paled, and started to get to work as best he could, considering that he was only working with one half of the expertise needed to fully know what he was doing.

VR - or Virtual Reality, for the old fashioned few - was as easy as anything. Piecing back together a VR simulation with his own mind and soul made real by shadows, real Shadows, was something he wished he could leave in his family's history books.

Then again, he'd never really listened when his grandfather'd told him he should probably stick to safer things. His scar, which had healed perhaps far too cleanly, was proof enough of that

"Damn it." Rintoki Bakura glanced beside him to find that Sabacc was busy glaring at anything other than Ishtar, fists clenched. "_Damn it_."

...

AN: Originally done for an LJ roleplay account. Which would explain why it shows who most of the characters are by description, and switches POV so often. And why the Yugi character is named so.

Set in the distant, far future, this story will include aspects of series such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, Firefly and others. Any sci-fi aspect that I think would fit the story world. As well as a few things of my own creation.

Most of the main characters will be descendants of the main YGO characters, but with BIG differences. They grew up differently. And as for Yugi and Bakura, they're based on combining both sides to create a full person. Appearances (talking Bakura here) are not just aesthetic. They have reasons.


End file.
